Playing the shame card

House Democrats have a plan to advance a gay rights bill that Speaker John Boehner has already declared dead: shaming Republicans.

It’s a strategy that has worked well for Democrats in the past. A campaign to pressure Republicans into reauthorizing an expanded version of the Violence Against Women Act forced the leadership to put the bill on the floor in February and allow it to pass with mostly Democratic votes.

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Democrats hope to use the same playbook to push the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that bans workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

VAWA “was about shaming people into voting for what was the right thing to do,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). “It’s a strategy that works.”

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi still gloats about the VAWA strategy, telling MSNBC recently that her party “made that bill too hot for the Republicans to handle.”

ENDA would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. It passed the Senate last week with the help of 10 Republicans.

But the bill faces a tougher fight in the GOP House, where lawmakers have raised concerns about the legislation sparking lawsuits and hurting religious institutions. A senior House Republican aide dismissed the idea that ENDA could be a sequel to VAWA.

“There is no comparison,” the aide said. “The House had already passed a VAWA bill, and the differences with the Senate bill — while important — were relatively small. Also, the underlying issue had far broader public support.”

It’s true that ENDA faces a far different political landscape than VAWA. Boehner has already said he opposes ENDA and aides have said a vote is unlikely — a more defined statement than during the VAWA debate. In fact, the push to reauthorize VAWA — initially signed into law in 1994 — already enjoyed widespread support among House Republicans, something that can’t be said for ENDA.

The trouble for VAWA only began once Senate Democrats expanded the law to include protections for LGBT and Native American women.

But Democrats were able to overcome that by tapping into post-election GOP anxiety about losing female voters. It’s harder for Democrats to exploit concerns among Republicans about losing GOP voters.

When it comes to ENDA, conservative opponents find fault with what they see as a path to legalizing gay marriage, something they staunchly oppose.

“These differences, unlike VAWA, are ideological,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who can’t vote on the legislation but supported both bills.

Some Democrats are acknowledging the challenges, noting that VAWA has an impact on a far broader swath of voters than ENDA.

“In terms of numbers, with Violence Against Women Act, we’re talking about slightly more than half of America,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “This is a smaller subset of the American population but it’s a principle that is equally important.”

But Norton said the LGBT population’s smaller size isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.

“[The LGBT community] used all of the hooks of democracy and those hooks do not involve them being the majority of the population, but they know how to lobby, they know how to give money, they know how to bring people out,” Norton said.

And supporters of the legislation point out that while LGBT individuals might constitute a smaller group, ENDA’s backers have made an effort to build a broad coalition that includes young people, the business community and civil rights groups.

Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore, who led the Democratic effort to pass VAWA in the House, said it was vital to win the support of at least some Republicans to move that legislation. She worked closely with Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who she said applied heavy pressure on Republican leadership to allow a vote.

While ENDA has Republican backers, it still lacks the same kind of heavy support from a veteran Republican.

“In the House of Representatives, we really, on the Republican side, need that same kind of internal pressure,” Moore said.

This is to say nothing of perhaps the biggest hurdle for ENDA in the House: the calendar.

The VAWA debate culminated in a vote just a month after the new Congress convened — virtually as far away from the next election as possible. But ENDA is slowly creeping into 2014, when getting anything passed ahead of an election becomes more difficult.

But Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) argues that once House members get clear of the possibility of primary challengers in the spring, it could make getting a vote on the bill easier.

“I think there is going to be less of the fear of a constant challenge of a tea party challenge in a primary that I think has frozen some people from making some good decisions,” he said.

Others are taking the long view. DeLauro points out that some bills require repeated attempts.

“Sometimes it takes years to pass legislation,” she said.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report incorrectly reported that Speaker John Boehner has said he won’t allow a vote on ENDA. Boehner has said he opposes ENDA, and aides have said a vote is unlikely.